Pens write ending for B’s

Friday

Mar 30, 2007 at 6:00 AM

By Bud Barth TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

It’s official: The Bruins will finish the season with at least 300 minutes of garbage time.

With five games still remaining in their regular season, the B’s were officially put out with the playoff trash last night by the Pittsburgh Penguins, who struck for three first-period goals on their way to a 4-2 victory at the Garden — their fourth straight win and 11th in 14 games.

Erik Christensen scored two goals for Pittsburgh, while NHL scoring leader Sidney Crosby picked up three assists. Evgeni Malkin and Colby Armstrong had the other goals.

Brandon Bochenski and Phil Kessel, two of Boston’s brightest hopes for the future, each had a goal and an assist for the Bruins, who have lost six of their last seven and 11 of their last 16.

With little to play for now except pride, the Bruins are hoping to at least go out by stringing some victories together. With a 35-36-6 record and 76 points, they’ve barely eclipsed last season’s disaster, when they finished 29-37-16 with 74 points.

“I want the guys to work hard,” coach Dave Lewis said. “I want them to be proud of the jersey and be proud of who they are. This game, it’s easier to play when you’re full of emotion, and right now the guys understand the situation; they’re not in the playoffs, and that hurts them. They feel like they’re defeated.”

Obviously, the focus becomes next year and making improvements. Before that happens, Lewis and general manager Peter Chiarelli must size up what they have now, and decide which pieces are worth keeping.

Lewis was encouraged by the play of the 19-year-old Kessel, who had a game-high eight shots on goal and did a nice job in the faceoff circle, going 9-4. He centered a line with Bochenski and Petr Tenkrat, and delivered what Lewis called his best game of the season.

“I think Phil’s going to get sick of me for the number of times I tell him to shoot the puck,” veteran defenseman Aaron Ward said. “I was so proud of him tonight because he let shots go. Sometimes you have to get a young guy past the idea that everything has to be a perfect shot.”

Bochenski has been one of the few pleasant surprises on this team, scoring 11 goals in just 26 games for Boston. Obviously, it whets the appetite for what he might be able to produce next season, but the 24-year-old winger — who is headed for possible unrestricted free agency this summer — said he can’t take much pride yet in personal stats.

“It’s hard at this point to look at that,” he said. “I want to make the playoffs. I mean, last year I got traded away at the deadline from a team (Ottawa) that was going to make the playoffs to a team (Chicago) that wasn’t. The reason I play is to make the playoffs and win it all. I’m just going to keep working hard and I’ll think about the individual stuff at the end of the year.”

Ward, another late-season acquisition, has won three Stanley Cups, and he thinks this team — disjointed as it was at times with all the new pieces — has potential.

“You see the moments of spectacular play when we play against Ottawa, play against Detroit, play against New Jersey,” the 34-year-old Ward said, “and it’s such a young team that sometimes finding consistency’s the toughest part. That’s one of those opportunities you start your team bonding in September and kind of come together in October. It’s something to look forward to.

“If you’re asking someone in my position, who’s played a number of years, ‘Are we headed in the right direction?’ Yes, we are.”

The Bruins got off first, scoring just 45 seconds into the game when Bochenski — hit in the back by defenseman Andrew Ference’s shot from the point while camped in front — batted home the loose puck for a 1-0 lead.

But Marco Sturm took a boarding penalty 40 seconds later, and the Penguins converted on the power play, Christensen whipping home a wrist shot from the slot at 3:20 after goalie Tim Thomas (22 saves) made a terrific point-blank stop on Michel Ouellet.

Pittsburgh hiked its lead to 2-1 when Armstrong skated into the middle and lifted a backhander past Thomas at 9:18.

The B’s tied it briefly when Kessel skated out from behind the net on the right side, had his initial backhander stopped, but batted the rebound out of the air — still on the backhand — and past goalie Marc-Andre Fleury at 10:56.

But the Pens came rushing right back the other way seconds later, led by Crosby, and Christensen rifled a shot from the left wing that trickled through Thomas’ pads at 11:27.

That first-period scoring stood up until Crosby fed Malkin at the left doorstep for the easy tap-in at 11:30 of the third period to clinch it, seven seconds after the expiration of a Pittsburgh power play.

“Our team, as teams go, is a relatively young team (in terms of time together),” Lewis said, “so we have to go through these pains of not making the playoffs, and remember how it feels right now for next year. You have to draw from that.”